1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheathing member mounting apparatus and a sheathing member mounting method
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, various kinds of sheathing members have been proposed for covering, for protection, the electric wire portions of a wire harness arranged in a vehicle or the like (see JP-A-11-7856 and JP-A-2009-302023). A sheathing member (protective material) described in JP-A-11-7856 is formed of a polyvinyl chloride sheet. After this sheet is wound around the periphery of the electric wire group, both ends in the sheet winding direction are laid one on the other, and the overlaid part is disposed in a thermo compression bonding portion of a thermal welding machine and welded by being pressurized and heated. Thereby, the sheet is mounted to the wire harness. A sheathing member (protective sheet) described in JP-A-2009-302023 is structured so as to be provided with a rubber sheet and an adhesive layer formed on one surface thereof. This sheet is wound around the periphery of the electric wire group, so that the adhesive layer adheres to the electric wire group and the adhesive layer on the end side in the winding direction is laid on the sheet on the start side and adheres thereto. Thereby, the sheet is mounted to the wire harness.
It is common practice that the wire harness is two-dimensionally disposed substantially along the wiring configuration when it is arranged in a vehicle or the like and the sheathing member is mounted in this disposition condition. That is, as shown in (a) of FIG. 19, a wire harness W is held in a predetermined arranging form in a manner such that a plurality of preharnesses each having a connector C connected to the terminal portion thereof are placed on a wiring board or the like and wiring portions W1 of these preharnesses are locked by locking pins or the like. Then, as shown in (b) of FIG. 19, a sheathing member P is mounted to the wiring portion W1 of each predetermined section, and the end portions of the sheathing members P are fixed to the wiring portions W1 by tape T; by this or the like, production is performed. Therefore, it is necessary to appropriately mount sheathing members to predetermined wire portions according to such a procedure of producing the wire harness W.
However, according to the above-described conventional mounting method as described in JP-A-11-7856, it is necessary to prepare a thermal welding machine for each sheathing member mounting position or move the thermal welding machine. For this reason, various problems arise such that the production equipment becomes large-scale and that the labor of the mounting work becomes huge. On the other hand, according to the above-described conventional mounting method as described in JP-A-2009-302023, sheets are wound and bonded one by one by a worker's manual operation. For this reason, there are also problems such that the workability of mounting the sheathing member cannot be enhanced and that when the sheet is wound, the adhesive layer adheres to a wrong part to waste the sheet. For this reason, development of a mounting apparatus is desired that is capable of efficiently mounting the sheathing member to the wire harness held in a predetermined arranging form.